San Francisco — Well, it appears as though Facebook is not only resolutely dethroning Google in terms of being the most trafficked website in the U.S., but the social networking behemoth threatens to take over yet another category. A recent survey shows that Facebook is driving traffic to news and media sites, and according to Hitwise’s follow up data shows that readers are more loyal to these sites and tend to come back for more, Googlers: not so much.
The community has lately established to hold an extremely loyal following among news readers, potentially threatening the dominant position held by Google News, which affects advertisers who are eager to leverage the social media craze. Meaning, they are not just one-click wonders but repeat visitors of the news and media sites as well, thanks to Facebook’s traffic referral.
“A few weeks ago when I posted my blog entry about Facebook being the largest news reader, I received a few comments and emails noting that visitors are not as valuable if they do not come back,” said Heather Hopkins, a senior online market analyst for Hitwise. “Advertisers and retailers need some assurance that visitors will return again and again.”
According to Hitwise’s latest compiled data, from the week ending March 6, 2010 78% of Facebook.com users were returning visitors to Print Media websites. Google News’ returning visitors were only at around 67%. While for Broadcast Media, Facebook has a 77% returning rate while Google News only has 64% returning rate.
Mindshare global chief of social media Ciaran Norris, who was in Australia last week for the Ad:Tech conference in Sydney, said advertisers including Unilever, Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble were already moving away from building expensive microsites towards constructing Facebook pages for their brands.
“There has not really been a global social network until now and the rise of Facebook has meant that now you have a platform which allows you to run campaigns that will reach users in multiple regions,” Norris said. “It costs less than to build a funky microsite, and Facebook is potentially where your audience already is.”
Last week Facebook knocked out Google for the first time as the most visited website in the US, according to research firm Hitwise, which tracked Facebook at 7.07 per cent of all web traffic, just ahead of Google’s 7.03 per cent.
Norris anticipated that Facebook’s revenues would rise quickly from an estimated $500m last year to more than $2 billion by next year.
“Some of the biggest direct digital advertisers are shifting budgets from Google to Facebook,” he said.
Well, it looks like Facebook is not only beating Google in terms of being the most visited site in the U.S., but it continues its bull-like expansion from colleges to high school to parents to the entire world, an accelerating number of people are falling under its spell of status updates, photo tagging, and gaming apps.
“Facebook allows for interaction, engagement and branding but also targeted messaging.” Norris also mentioned that within the next year or two, Facebook’s revenues would be “in the billions”.
And while Facebook has no other social network to seriously contend with, Google will have to fend off the surprisingly tenacious Bing.